


All That Stays Is Dying, All That Lives Is Getting Out

by victoria_p (musesfool)



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Canonical Character Death, Community: hp_literotica, Grimmauld Place, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2006-05-05
Updated: 2006-05-05
Packaged: 2018-03-20 14:30:40
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 681
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3653850
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/musesfool/pseuds/victoria_p
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Happiness is unfamiliar territory now, indistinct in the distance, with a thousand traps for the unwary on the way.</p>
            </blockquote>





	All That Stays Is Dying, All That Lives Is Getting Out

**Author's Note:**

> Title from "Urge for Going" by Joni Mitchell; written for the hp_literotica poetry challenge.

_You can see a little patch of dark blue_  
_Stung by a sinister star that fades_  
_With faint quiverings, so small and white..._  
\--"Novel" by Arthur Rimbaud

*

Grey day passes into grey day, another page of the calendar torn off, tossed onto the fire. Sirius watches the edges brown and curl, like his skin has over the years, worn thin by despair, rage, and grief.

Fire used to mean warmth, companionship, passion, and now it's all gone like so much ash and smoke, swept over the threshold to scatter on the doorstep and drift away on the cold November wind.

He hears them whispering about him:

_He's not eating._

and

_I think he's drinking again._

_Can you blame him?_

Nervous laughter, quickly stifled.

The next day, it begins again:

_Does he ever sleep?_

and

_You should talk to him._

_He'd listen to you, Minerva._

_When Remus comes home...._

Fourteen years before, in the last autumn of his youth, before the endless cold of winter set in, he'd heard the same whispers dwindling into sudden silence as he made his presence known.

He remembers bursts of color, flares of heat, over the years--vivid red hair, bright hazel eyes, pale skin kissed gold by the sun--but in the end, it always fades to grey, to grief. He doesn't like how history's repeating, and he's powerless to change it.

He tries to find good memories in which to lose himself, but happiness is unfamiliar territory now, indistinct in the distance, with a thousand traps for the unwary on the way.

And then, a warm hand on his shoulder, the scent of wet, decaying leaves blown round by the wind, and a soft voice like a well-worn jumper in his ear.

"Sirius?"

He looks up from the dying fire, blinking to make his eyes focus. Remus is damp and windblown and _here_ , the touch of his fingers on Sirius's cheek galvanizing; Sirius shivers with the tingle of blood running warm and free after the circulation's been cut off too long.

Remus pulls him up out of his chair and into a tight embrace. Sirius buries his face in the crook of Remus's neck, inhaling the scent of damp wool and cucumber soap and _Remus_.

"Missed you," Remus mumbles against his hair, breath warm and smelling of tea. "Let's go upstairs."

He lets Remus lead him up to the bedroom, the one he hasn't slept in since the day Remus left on his mission for Dumbledore.

Remus doesn't scold--his mouth is too busy with kissing, tongue pushing hard and quick past Sirius's lips, hands pushing at Sirius's robes, until they are naked on the rumpled bed that smells of old sex and stale sweat and _them_. Sirius can see the flush rising under his skin, transfiguring his body from white, blue-veined marble to flesh again, warm and touchable. He is all black and white and grey until Remus touches him--Remus, who is autumn wheat and winter cream, with skin the color of oatmeal, dappled with cinnamon freckles, eyes as brown as mud and hair the color of dishwater; Remus, with a heart that beats with furious, urgent _life_ , under Sirius's lips, _thump-thump thump-thump_ , as they move against each other.

The wicked scythe of Remus's mouth is red as maple leaves and swollen from kisses, and Sirius arches up to taste him again, to breathe him in, to suck out a piece of his soul to keep while he's away.

Sirius shudders and comes, Remus's (bone-white) fingers wound in his (night-black) hair, pain edging the pleasure enough to make him believe it's real, burn it into his memory so he can take it out and examine it later; when Remus is gone and everything fades to grey again, this little patch of brightness sparking against the dark--it grows larger every time they touch--will lead him back.

When Sirius falls

( _red flash_

_grey stone_

_black veil_

_white fog_ )

the last thing he forgets is Remus--dirtywhite like day-old snow and brown like grass that's dying--shining gold in the flickering candlelight.

end


End file.
